''The characters talk straight from the hip and the Wyoming landscape is its own kind of eloquence'' New York Times

Craig Johnson''s first short story, ''Old Indian Trick'', featured one of the earliest appearances of Sheriff Walt Longmire. Each Christmas Eve thereafter, Craig Johnson has sent out a new short story featuring an episode in Walt''s life that doesn''t appear in the novels.

Here are those beloved stories - and one new story, ''Petunia, Bandit Queen of the Bighorns'' - collected for the first time in a single volume. With glimpses of Walt''s past from the incident in ''Ministerial Aide'', when the sheriff is mistaken for a deity, to the hilarious ''Messenger'', where the majority of the action takes place in a Port-A-Potty, Wait for Signs is a wonderful way to be introduced to the fictional world of Absaroka County, Wyoming.